Psalm 82
8 verses · BSBPsalms book hub →
Speaks with:John 10×2Psalms 82×22 Chronicles 19×1Proverbs 18×1Deuteronomy 1×1Psalms 58×1
Summary
Chapter summary
God standeth in the congregation of God; he judgeth among the gods: 'How long will ye judge unjustly?' Judge the poor and fatherless; rescue them out of the hand of the wicked. They walk in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. 'I said, Ye are gods… nevertheless ye shall die like men', the verse Jesus takes up in John 10:34. The psalm ends in the only sufficient prayer: 'Arise, O God, judge the earth; for thou shalt inherit all the nations.'
Context
Poetry · David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, others — Psalms overview
The world behind this chapter
Psalms 82The history
The scene is a court. God stands in the assembly and passes judgment in the middle of beings the psalm calls gods. Two readings of that word are ancient and both are held today. MannaFest reads it, as the wording most naturally carries, of real spiritual rulers — members of a heavenly council set over the nations, the same world Daniel opens a window on when he names the princes of Persia and Greece — now put on trial for letting injustice run in the territories assigned to them. The other long-standing reading takes the gods as Israel's human judges, who bore God's own authority when they sat in court. The charges are the same either way.
And the charges are all courtroom charges: accepting the persons of the wicked, failing to defend the poor and the fatherless, failing to deliver the needy out of the hand of the wicked. In Israel the fatherless and the widow had no man to speak for them at the gate, so a dishonest judge was not an inconvenience to them — he was the end of them.
The sentence is the shock. Ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. Whatever these rulers are, mortality is being imposed on them as a punishment, which only makes sense as a sentence if it was not already their condition.
The Mishnah records this as the psalm the Levites sang in the temple on the third day of every week. Israel put a trial of the powers into its ordinary Tuesday service.
What it meant to them
To people at the bottom of somebody else's system, this said the crooked power over them is neither permanent nor independent. It is on trial, and the verdict has already been read.
The last line is the congregation's own petition: arise, O God, judge the earth, for thou shalt inherit all nations. They are asking the Judge to take direct possession.
Sources cited
- Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm
- The Mishnah , tractate Tamid 7:4 (Danby translation)
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Psalms 82. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Connections from this chapter
v. 6 · Quoted here
'I said, Ye are gods': Jesus.
John 10:34→Jesus replied, “Is it not written in your Law: ‘I have said you are gods’?
public-domain commentaries in agreement
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.